USA

In today's roundup: China, USA, Russia, Cuba, Ireland, EU and Zimbabwe. Photo of a water tank in Cuba from the Generation Y blog.

In today's roundup: Burma, Bolivia, China, Kosovo, USA, Zimbabwe, and Haiti and the global food crisis. Photograph of children in Haiti by Flickr user sagabardon.

In today's roundup: China, Tibet, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Iran, Nauru and the USA. Photo of pro-Tibet demonstration by Flickr user mejules.

It's hard to imagine that a country that promotes democracy and freedom at every opportunity has become the center of the debacle on human rights abuses. But such is the paradox of democracy, that those who strive to make the world a democratic union, often cause more damage than good.

The subject of terrorism has captivated much of the global political discourse since September 11, 2001. In a world that now fights an unrecognizable enemy, practices such as the torture of terrorist suspects has plunged human rights abuses to a new low. Today's feature film, Taxi To The Dark Side, investigates how the United States has blurred the line between interrogation and torture.

Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who made the Why Democracy? film Taxi to the Dark Side (about murder, torture and abuse in US-run prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba) wrote the following in response to today's New York Times report on the existence of a secret Justice Department memo endorsing extreme forms of interrogation of detainees.

The President and the Vice President of the United States appear to have an unquenchable thirst for cruelty. The proof is that their political myrmidons in the Department of Justice and in the office of the Vice President have gone to extraordinary and unprecedented lengths to make coercive interrogation and torture the official policy of the United States of America.

Today, an extraordinary article appeared in the New York Times, which revealed the existence of secret documents that chronicle the ruthless and indefatigable efforts of a small group of men inside the Department of Justice to maintain the ability of US personnel to continue to engage in torture or - if that word offends - a policy of intentional cruelty toward prisoners.

The Home of the Brave?

Not quite, as we who engage find out, on a daily basis.

From a rather expected and mainstream news source comes this-

Secret US endorsement of severe interrogations

The New York Times reports today that the US Justice Dept. issued a secret memo in 2005 that endorsed brutal methods of extracting information from detainees, in sharp contrast to the department's public stance on torture.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

This will come as no surprise to the subjects of Alex Gibney's Why Democracy? film, Taxi to the Dark Side -- at least those who didn't die as a result of torture.

DailyKos writer MCJoan suggests that the main result of this news should be the refusal of the US Senate to approve attorney-general nominee Michael Mukasey unless he publicly repudiates torture and vows that the Justice Dept. under his tenure will not sign off on torture as it did under his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.

Their books both started a global debate around free market politics,
especially in the context of the Blackwater shooting in Iraq earlier
this month. Both books are high priority publications this year and
both writers are highly discussed these weeks: But what do bloggers
think about Alan Greenspan's and Naomi Klein's latest work?

Either it is constitutional, or it's not - right?

But the good news is:

"Today, Judge Ann Aiken of the Oregon Federal District Court ruled
that two provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA), "50 U.S.C. §§ 1804 and 1823, as amended by the Patriot Act, are
unconstitutional because they violate the Fourth Amendment of the
United States Constitution.""

Source: Kurt Opsahl on EFF - Deep Links

Found via: Xeni Jardin on Boing Boing

Years ago, we assumed that capitalism and democracy went hand in glove, that capitalism almost inevitably led to democracy and vice versa. Now we cannot be so sure.

China has become a hotbed of capitalism but it is not a democracy by any stretch. Nor Singapore. Russia calls itself a democracy, and it is practicing a form of capitalism, but few would agree that its democracy is robust.

Indeed, even in the United States, as I noted this morning, capitalism has burgeoned over the last thirty years -- into what I call "Supercapitalism" in my new book by that name -- but democracy has become far less capable of reflecting what we want or need to do together, as citizens.